For stock HOI2 and HOI3, '38 was the FAR better choice for Multiplayer. The MEM project for HOI2 was, imo, the most concerted effort to make HOI2 the best Multiplayer experience it could be and it started in Mid '38.

With '36, there was too long of a ramp up, and things just get out of whack with crazy IC builds etc and 2 dozen German CV's. 1939 was too easy for the Allies imo as Germany had no time to tailor their forces.

"A good plan, violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week." -Patton"...a bad plan, is always a bad plan." -aphro

I think you're chasing a ghost. It's impossible to force historical accuracy on a multiplayer group via rules, game mechanics or otherwise. Players are blessed to 20/20 hindsight and have several practice runs with the war. At it's core it's a game, so it can and will be min-max'd. The best you can hope for is something that has solid unit balance, production balance and a diplomatic system that is tolerant enough to not fubar all AI nations due to ahistorical player actions.

...for the record, I thought MEM was a great mod for what it tried to accomplish. God knows it got more attention than stock HOI2. From my experience with the HOI3 beta and reading over many Johan/King/Podcat posts in that thread, pdox really does not care about multiplayer. Their design focus is centered around making it a good run for Germany, and if the mechanics work for the other nations...that's just gravy. At this point, for HOI3...what few betas that are still active (no me) they are the real people driving balance and game play features. Pdox only really gets involved to squash documented bugs and to work on new features for xpacs.

The game engine is not designed to be overly MP friendly, and the balance is just gawd awful. When a project comes along that is built from the ground up by MP players and supported by it, that's about the only way you'll get a good MP experience. Even the Ederon guys mod HOI3 for MP (if they're still playing it).

"A good plan, violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week." -Patton"...a bad plan, is always a bad plan." -aphro

I was working on a mod for AoD late last year (WitE has since distracted me since ) I was using April 15th, 1939 as the start date. This kept things within reason regarding ahistorical type situations (this was around the time all European powers started thinking seriously about another big war), while still giving a little flexibility to builds and such. I thought it worked well.

1936 scenario is too long for the large majority of people.
1938 scenario is considered inaccurate by many people.
1939 scenario leaves no room for customization.

So I still think it is a worthwhile effort.

The problem I expected to encounter was that not everyone would agree with the modified OOB.

But surely I could manage something that at least the 5 or 6 hypothetical people in a game would agree was BETTER than what was available.

I only intend to modify the OOB.
It wouldn't have to be a mod with a changed checksum, an edited save game would work fine.

The purpose of this thread is to collect everyone's idea of why 1938 is not balanced, and how the OOB and sliders could be changed in your opinions to make it better.
Then I would take a distillation of everyone's thoughts and try to come up with some of the common changes where people were on the same page.

Hello,
I have been making edits to the 1938 scenario regarding airfields, naval bases, IC and infrastructure to make it more balanced and historical.
I am open to any suggestions on what to edit but I am particularly curious as to people's thoughts on what the effective and basic IC should be for each major, if not in exact numbers then in proportion. (I.e. should the USA's base IC be 1.5 times that of Germany's?)

Mr_B0narpte wrote:Hello,
I have been making edits to the 1938 scenario regarding airfields, naval bases, IC and infrastructure to make it more balanced and historical.
I am open to any suggestions on what to edit but I am particularly curious as to people's thoughts on what the effective and basic IC should be for each major, if not in exact numbers then in proportion. (I.e. should the USA's base IC be 1.5 times that of Germany's?)

Please link xD.

Also, Last game you mentioned you're preparing a remake of the 1941 scenario to fix its crazes a bit too. Maybe post it all in a single thread when this one is ready as well?

But bear in mind I have only edited the scenario folder, and haven't touched it for several years. But I have just edited it so that the vanilla 1938 scenario is touched. I will do further improvements to the 1938 scenario if people are interested in seeing it developed further. If I remember correctly, all I have edited is IC and infra levels.

desev wrote:Also, Last game you mentioned you're preparing a remake of the 1941 scenario to fix its crazes a bit too. Maybe post it all in a single thread when this one is ready as well?